This invention relates to electrical connectors and, in particular, to an alignment and blind mate assist shroud for securing to an electrical connector to assist in aligning a complementary connector during mating of the two connectors as well as maintaining alignment of the complementary connector during unmating of the two connectors.
Many pin headers have a shroud that extends to the same height as the pin field in the header. The purpose of having a shroud that does not extend beyond the pin field is to save space. A complementary mating connector is typically terminated to a ribbon cable. When the complementary connector is mated to the pin field in the pin header, the shroud permits the cable to extend transverse to the pins substantially at the edge of the shroud and only slightly beyond the end of the pins of the pin field.
Several problems have resulted from having the shroud and pins extend to substantially the same height above the base of a pin header. Blind mating is not practical as there is no shroud structure to provide guidance to the complementary connector. When mating a complementary connector to such a pin header, there is no structure on the pin header to assure that the pins in the pin header and the receptacle contact in the complementary connector are aligned before forces that would tend to mate the connectors if they were aligned are applied. This can be potentially damaging, resulting in bent pins. Upon unmating a mated complementary connector from such a pin header there is nothing to prevent the mating connector from being tilted and thus removed in an arc rather than being removed parallel to the direction of the pins within the shroud since there is not shroud structure extending above the pin field. Such an arcuate removal path, known as peeling, can result in bent pins.
There is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,664,462 a two-piece shroud for securing to a back panel about an aperture therethrough. The two-piece shroud provides latching and aligning means for a mating connector received by a bulkhead connector mounted on the opposite side of the panel.
It would be desirable to have a retrofittable structure easily securable to an electrical connector such as a pin header to provide a pin header which has a shroud that extends to the same height of the pin field with structure extending beyond the pin field that would provide alignment of a complementary connector prior to mating, permit blind mating and maintain alignment during unmating so as to prevent damage to the pins.